22 August—A Waterbury jury convicted Bernard Peluso in 2019 of sexually assaulting an underage girl a few years earlier because the trial judge, Kevin Murphy, allowed the prosecution to substantively amend its complaint after it discovered the original complaint didn’t hold water. Murphy maintained that the amended dates, which were favorable to the prosecution, were merely a matter of semantics. The conviction was upheld by the appellate court.

Last week, however, the Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction. Justice Andrew McDonald, who wrote the lengthy, closely reasoned decision, said that Murphy had “abused” his discretion in allowing the state’s late amendment to its complaint after the trial had begun.

And Murphy certainly had abused his discretion. But he wasn’t alone. As I’ve written on a number of occasions, judges often—if not usually—do abuse their discretion in favor of the prosecution in criminal proceedings and all levels of government in civil proceedings. Judges tend to be more lenient with police and prosecution and other government witnesses, prosecutors, and government attorneys in trials and hearings than with others.

How often are police or prosecutors called on the carpet for pulling all manner of fiddles—abusing their discretion—to get convictions? So-called testilying is not unknown (to put it mildly) among the law-enforcement fraternity. But how many cops are actually cited for perjury even when it’s exposed?

And, while it’s axiomatic that ignorance of the law is no defense, evidently that applies only to civilians. I can remember a number of cases where police officers admitted to breaking the law in one way or another but claimed they had no idea they were in fact breaking the law. And without exception they got away with it. In one instance, in fact, the trial judge even apologized to the cop for allowing the defense attorney to embarrass him . . .